


from one extreme to another (five things jo harvelle never became, and two she did)

by DragonNinjaAri



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Canonical Character Death, Established Relationship, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-11
Updated: 2012-04-11
Packaged: 2017-11-03 10:59:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/380657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonNinjaAri/pseuds/DragonNinjaAri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jo Harvelle could have been many things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	from one extreme to another (five things jo harvelle never became, and two she did)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written April 10th, 2011.

i.

They're blue and she's a fucking cliche, the bad apple who made it through all four years of college (with only one failing grade and only a handful of classes missed due to hangovers) and graduated with her own degree and everything, a piece of paper certifying her as a proper human being, her ticket to society and normal and everything you'd ever want.

They're blue and they look silky and smooth, but when she puts them on and when she sits waiting for her name and glass smiling all she can think is how much they make her want to scratch off her skin and how much it feels like everything's crawling all over her. Scratchy inside, silky outside.

She falls in line after dozens of hundreds she's never been talked to, curls her eyes away from her roommate from first year -- the reason why she opted for singles each time, well not just that, because no one really understands knife collections and polishing blades and sleeping with one under her pillow each night -- that girl who's all smiles and waves. Four years of masks is four years too long; at least at the Roadhouse she could hang them up at the end of the day.

At least they didn't obscure her completely.

But when she shakes the hand of a man she's only glimpsed and accepts the paper confirming her success in the "real world," out she looks into the audience at her mom, and she manages one patchwork smile.

At the reception a professor says her father would be so proud of her.

She watches the certificate burn later that night, giving someone she doesn't know anymore a funeral.

ii. 

Who asked the question to begin with? It's something Jo honestly doesn't remember. One day it just happened and here they are. For a moment she'd worried her mother would fret and freak, hire a whole legion to take this day over and make her long for a coven of witches to go after.

Turns out that doesn't happen, because Ellen Harvelle tells her to just make sure she knows that this is what she wants, because a few years on the road's sobered Jo and a few years of hunting with her has cooled Ellen as well.

The whole apocalypse thing helped, Jo thinks.

Still, it doesn't stop her from, the night before, laying in the back of a beaten down truck outside  _Singer Salvage_ , her head pillowed by Dean's stomach and her fingers just inches from his.

"Shit," she laughs out as he swats a mosquito landing on her arm. "We are really actually doing this, aren't we?"

Tremors and rumbles shake her body as he echoes the laugh and asks, "You still want to, right?" Half a second later he's up on his elbows and repeating, "...You  _do_  want to, right? Really?"

Evenly, she replies, "I'm gonna break your nose again."

"Yeah. Yeah, that was a stupid question."

"Lay back down, Dean."

Her shirt's ridden up a bit and she can feel the dust on her skin, the cool metal against her hipbone. It's warm tonight, but not too warm. All that perfect moment crap is overrated, she's learned, but damn, this almost feels like one, in a truck with no wheels below the stars, her family and friends inside, Dean here. It's peace, even though she's grimy from a hunt. Probably because of that.

Jo doesn't own a single thing that's white, because growing up she'd get them dirty too often, so the dress is black and really simple, but nothing's ever going to be traditional anyway for them. As it turns out, just after the final binding words leave her lips, things go downhill-- who knew word spread so far through the grapevine that it'd bring a bunch of vampires?

"Should've seen this coming," Dean mutters as he fires off another round, his suit warn at the sleeves.

Her mom's screaming something at probably the pack leader and Bobby's handing her more ammo, and Sam's got a knife and Castiel's smiting left and right, and Ash is somewhere inside, smart.

"Shut up and keep firing, sweetheart." Back-to-back. She aims and knocks an approaching vamp on its ass and Castiel goes in for the kill.

This probably isn't what the term  _shotgun wedding_  means, but again, Jo hates tradition.

iii.

This is not Heaven. Jo knows that. This is nowhere she's ever seen or heard of.

Picture a wasteland, except the sky and the ground melt into one another and the concept of direction doesn't exist. Picture a sprawling, endless savannah with no grass, no life, just cracked and ruined earth. Picture a land so dark and warped that the world has abandoned it, and the sky is not the sky and the ground is not the ground and trying to make sense of it for too long sends you, a spirit, long for the concept of motion and vertigo and movement, just so you can throw up as it sends you to your knees.

Something pulses outward on the dark ground, ripples from invisible rocks through solid ground. It's a color that Jo would describe as purple, only because she has no other way of processing it. Nothing exists here as it should.

This is not Heaven. This is not where Jo expected to end up after Osiris pulled her from her rest.

She gasps a breath but only because it makes her feel better; the dead don't need to breathe, after all. What does the ground feel like beneath her? Nothing, that's what it feels like, and that doesn't comfort her at all; the pulse sends shivers through her and her very being flickers and trembles. Is she still a ghost or spirit? How? Why?

 _Look away,_  something shifts the world around her. A voice, except not a voice.  _Look away from me._

Being told not to do something for Jo is the ultimate  _come and get it_ , especially when it's being whispered by a disembodied...thing she doesn't recognize. The world shifts again and her head snaps up, and before her is an ever-shifting, ever-changing creature, full of light and many wings, so many faces and none of them human. It is massive and moments later compact, tendrils of light curling about it. Again, Jo gasps; this time her very chest clenches, right where her heart would be, right down to her soul.

"What the hell...?" The question fades on her voice. This creature is horrifying and mystifying all at once.

She stares at it and it floats-- shifts-- does it have legs?-- there, and whatever it was expecting to happen doesn't happen, because she hears-- senses-- feels--  _your eyes didn't explode._

All at once, Jo doesn't like this creature. "Well, yeah," she says, rising to her feet upon remembering that-- "I'm dead." Why that matter she can't understand, but it feels like the right thing to say.

 _Oh. Oh, of course. Oh. **Oh**! _ The tendrils flutter and shift and the faces interchange with great frequency, so much that Jo's not sure if she's actually seeing some of the faces or just thinks she is.  _Jo. Is that you?_

Instinctively she grabs for her knife knowing she won't find it, longing to feel its comforting handle against her skin. (She doesn't feel. She doesn't have skin. She is dead.)

But still she spits out, "How the fuck do you know my name?"

_I'm sorry. I'm sorry, let me see if I can_

Maybe it reforms or maybe it just disappears and something else appears in its place, but in an instant the being before her is Castiel. The presence all around her shifts and he's speaking, he's actually speaking, he's actually-- "appear as I once--  yes, that is much better."

"Holy crap, Cas." Jo's voice is a windy wisp. "Is this...an angel graveyard?" How young and silly does she sound? A graveyard is all this can be. This awful place is where angels go?

"When we die, this is...the place we go to," he says, and that's all the confirmation she needs. "I don't understand why you're here, however. This...hasn't happened."

Another few pulses ripple through the ground. "Osiris. Must've been because he was-- banished. I..." Her hands go to her head. What about her mom? Ash? Everyone in Heaven. They'll think she just vanished. Or worse, she's a spirit forever.

Which may be the case.

It gets clearer after you're dead, but all Jo Harvelle feels now is anger, anger for what Osiris tried to make her do, anger for forcing her and controlling her like a tool or a weakling. "How can I get out?" She tries to be calm but more pulses-- are they from strong reactions?

But she can't. But this is unheard of. But once you're here, you're stuck.

But time passes and Jo is trapped in the angel graveyard. But--

"When I am near you," Castiel says, soon after and long after, for time has started to lose meaning and lose feeling, "something is different. Here, I have my grace. My thoughts. My being. But I don't have my power. My grace is...depleted. You are a soul. Pure energy and creation. Souls are...powerful."

"Just what are you saying Cas?" Jo floats. Physics has lost itself too. Everything is losing itself, and if she stays here too much longer, she might lose herself too.

He, in the form of his vessel, with his trench coat, with his unshaven face, for that is how Jo recognizes him, looks right at her. It pierces her very being. "Together, we may be able to leave. Something out there is...very wrong. And I--" His thoughts stop. Jo knows. Jo's been watching. Jo knows exactly what Castiel wants. "...together, we could return to Earth. If this works. I could remake your body, and we could walk as one."

"A vessel? Me?" Light ripples spread out across the ground-sky. "Isn't that a one-person only kind of thing?"

"You misunderstand. Vessel isn't how I would put it. We would be...bonded. It is risky. I don't know if it would work. If our consciousnesses would..." Castiel flickers, and for a moment all she sees is light. He is unsure.

And Jo looks at her hand.

And Jo watches it flicker as well.

And Jo feels her form, unstable here.

(Another angel is here who warns against it; Anna, who tells them both they could lose their very beings, who tells them both the world can fight on without them, who tells her she can find another way, who in the end says it is their choice.)

Castiel floats in front of her. Jo grabs his tie and pulls him close, and for a moment all in front of her is his true form, and she fears her eyes will burn from her face and her being will snuff out in brilliant flame. But then the mouth she associates as his, the eyes that are his, his everything, and she says, "Angel me up, Cas."

She's the one to initiate it. A kiss, like a deal with a demon, because aren't the stakes the same? For them both? He responds and they melt, they melt into each other in a brilliant light.

Pulses.

So many pulses.

And time loses itself, feeling loses itself, and they are not separate, they are one being, one self.

They are an angel. She is.

Jo is something completely new.

iv.

Hunting. Hunting tends to be her favorite thing.

The target's leaving a bar, half-drunk and half-baked with ego, drunk with power. She follows. They never change, do they?

He's an easy mark. He's ridiculously naive for this, tricked with a simple act of innocence. She twirls brown hair and smiles pretty. She places hands on his arms. He'll meet up with the others later, he says. Don't wait for him.

Things never change. She knows that from a long time ago, except it's something she can't put her mind on.

Oh well.

"Now, werewolf sighting you said?" His back is turned. She's paces behind him, manicured nails reaching forward. "Shouldn't hunt by yourself, little miss. 'Specially at your age."

"Yeah. I've been told that." By who? By what? When? That's silly.

This is the first time she's pretended to be a hunter.

"Neither should you." In a burst, the old man slams into the alleyway, and her black eyes shine. He almost screams but she snaps his neck in an instant.

Maybe the others will say she's sloppy, but by the time the hunters realize just what's happened, they'll all be dead. It's their own fault, she thinks, looking down on the man she just killed.

"Trying to stop a hellhound." The meat-suit's mouth curves into a bitter smirk. "No one can outrun them. No one."

(A shotgun round. Look out. A flurry of claws. Blood and entrails. Hang on, hang on, it's okay, we'll get you out of here, we'll get you out.

Too late.)

She leaves the body laying there. By the time the week is up, it'll be another soul to collect. These hunters never learn.

v.

"You guys are fucking stupid."

Jo's in the motel room, between Sam and Dean, arms crossed and brows knit together.

"Gee, thanks, Jo, you're really the most caring guide I've ever had." Dean's in top form tonight. And by that she of course means, he's still ridiculously childish.

Her attention turns to him and she snaps, "I wasn't chosen to be caring, I was chosen to keep you two from doing something to get yourselves killed." After a moment she adds, "And if you start doing that everything's my fault, everyone should leave me crap again, so help me, I will  _end_  you."

Her absolute favorite way of dealing with them. Tough love, hyperbole. They all know she can only touch them in lucid dreams or meditation or this astral state.

Like clockwork, Sam pipes up, "Come on. Let's stick to the task at hand. Jo, you said that we've got a lead for us? What's the spirit world say?"

Jo eases into the chair on the other side of the room, relishing the feeling of it. Astral projection really is her favorite kind of communication. It's almost like she's alive again.

"You won't like part of it. The demons? They're not happy. Looks like they're on the move again." Her eyes focus on something beyond the wall, something only she can see, on the world beyond.

Dean's fist hits the nightstand. Only the three of them can hear. "Dammit, I knew that enemy of my enemy shit wouldn't last. Crowley--"

Waves shoot off her, silencing him immediately. Her emotions are open to them and theirs to her. It's a connection that soothes her now, that soothes them. It's a connection that grounds them and pushes them, like gentle waves or roaring rapids.

"No time for that. Look, that's the  _bad_  news." Jo's more floating than sitting now, channeling the spirit world around her. It's like tapping into psychic energy, like tapping into everything she's been skeptical about. Who knew appearing in dreams, lucid thoughts, who knew it could all lead to this? "I've been looking into this. Heaven's in disarray, but I know someone who can help."

"Well, don't just leave us hanging," Dean presses, though she catches how tired he is, knows she'll have to talk with him later, after meditation with Sam to try and quell the memories of Hell again.

Quieter, Sam asks, "What is it, Jo?"

She can't hide her smile. "I've found him. I found Castiel."

Who knew you could do so much as a spirit guide? Death, sometimes, really is just the beginning.

vi.

"Yeah, I've got it." Jo's got her hair pulled back into a ponytail and a cellphone balanced on her shoulder, knife in one hand and flashlight in the other. "Tapping out, Mom. See you in a few."

Cracks and creaks as she walks across the floor, but the ghost knows she's here. That's not her concern. Her ears prick forward, focusing only on the sounds of the house, not the wind against the shutters or the skittering of rodents, but the house and it's swaying and groaning, the soft sounds, the whimpers--

In a few swift strides, she crosses to a cupboard under the stairs and jars it open; it's sticking, of course.

Two green eyes stare up at her. A little girl, probably eight, crouches, her sobs catching in her throat. "A-are you another--?"

Jo shakes her head quickly and reaches down her hand. "Nope. Gracie, isn't it?" A tiny nod. "No ghost here. Just a friend. C'mon, your mom's worried about you."

Little sniffles escape her. "You know my mommy?"

"Yep. She sent me to find you." Jo tries not to glance over her shoulder. Her entire being tenses, but this kid-- this kid here, that's what she has to focus on.

Gracie reaches up her arms wordlessly and Jo pulls her up, holding her in the same arm as the flashlight. Not so hard. This little kid, she's not gonna become like those others, Jo thinks, she's gonna get out safe--

Having a screaming kid next to your ears is a fast way to go deaf. Jo's learned this the hard way, many times. Once again, it seems she's traveling down this path. Gracie's shriek makes her spin about, the flickering, pale ghost of a thirty-year-old serial killer reaching for her.

She doesn't hesitate. Her hand jerks forward and her father's knife slashes into the poltergeist. He screams and vanishes, and Jo's shoulder is soaked wet from Gracie's tears and snot. So much for sneaking out.

"Hold tight." Little girl listens.

When they're out, when Gracie's back with her mom, when the bones are salted and burned and a day's gone by, Jo and Ellen stop by, making sure the family's okay, making sure of a lot of things. Just another hunt, just another job.

Except as they're leaving Gracie runs to the Harvelle truck and catches Jo by the legs before she can climb in. Her tiny hands dig into Jo's jeans, and she can't help but lean down and give her a hug.

"No one in school's gonna believe me, but I'm gonna tell 'em I got saved by a superhero," she not-whispers.

Then the kid runs back to her mom, waves goodbye, and they're on the road, halfway out of town when Ellen quips, "So. Superhero, huh?"

Jo rolls her eyes and focuses on the grain out the window. "Just a hunter, mom."

"Just a hunter."

vii.

(Heaven's a mess. Heaven's a mess and who's even in charge anymore. The angels are dead or missing, and the Leviathan are making quick work of Earth. And Jo? Jo won't stand for it. Not any longer.

More and more break out of their own Heavens, like her and her mom and all the rest of them, and more start to rally at the Roadhouse. This place is theirs now. This place, the angels are running scared and unsure. So someone has to step up and figure out just what the fuck's going on.

With an army of souls around her, with so many turning to those who died in the hunt for leadership, with stories spread far and wide, Jo swallows down her nerves, ones that rise for only a moment. Dean and Sam have the Earth. For now. It's still her home, everyone's home, and with Heaven a mess--

Well, looks like it's up to them to take care of it.

So she looks out to the hopeful faces, and she says, "Well, everyone, we've got work to do.")


End file.
